Six Nations 'Amazon of craft stores' celebrates 65 years in business
CBC
The largest and oldest arts and crafts store on Six Nations of the Grand River near Hamilton, Ont., is celebrating its 65th anniversary on Aug. 3.
Iroqrafts, founded in 1959 by Buck and Bunny Spittal, still has no website but has grown substantially from its original one-room plywood shop on Oneida Road.
William Guy (Buck) Spittal was a white man from London, Ont., who lived on the reserve. His wife Myra (Bunny) Spittal was Cayuga from Six Nations.
Their son, Nyundio Spittal, said the nicknames came about "because Dad was making money and mom ... she had a brace on her leg so she'd hop, I guess — so Buck and Bunny. Buck's Bunny."
Beloved in the community, Buck had an entrepreneurial spirit and saw a need in the community. The store sells both craft supplies and crafts.
Nyundio started working at the store when he was just nine years old. He remembers when his father started bringing soapstone into the community around 1970.
"He got guys working with soapstone and that helped a lot of guys who were on leave from their jobs," he said.
"A lot of guys were let go during winter time maybe from their union jobs or construction jobs and then they get on the soapstone and that helped them get through the season or year till the next time they get back to work."
Nyundio said this also created several exceptional carvers in the community.
Bunny died in 2018; Buck in 2021. Today, their daughter Nandell Hill runs the store, now much larger than the one her parents opened.
She said at one point, Iroqrafts had well over 300 soapstone carvers. She said they're down to just three with old ones passing on, new industries and more people getting an education within the community to earn an income.
Iroqrafts was also well-known for the publishing series called Iroquois Reprints. Many obscure academic publications by anthropologists like A.C. Parker, Horatio Hale and William Fenton — rich with Haudenosaunee history and tradition — were reprinted and sold at Iroqrafts.
"We still need our oral tradition, of course, and that's exactly what [Buck] thought back then, because a lot of the books that he reprinted were out of print," said Hill.
"That's one of the main reasons I believe that he wanted to reprint all those titles, to have that information out there."
